Turn off PC, hibernate or sleep?

Bit late to the party but i've only really paid this any mind this week having had Windows 7 since 2010 & just always turned my PC off.

Just wondering for those reading this, what do you opt for once you've finished at night and why?
I suppose it may (or may not, who knows) be a bit different for laptop users. I wouldn't personally leave a laptop in sleep or hibernate mode but then i don't use my laptop often, only really for car diagnostics.

My main machine is a PC which runs Windows 7 64bit pro. I don't actually see the hibernate option so i wonder if this was introduced later in Windows 8/10 but sleep is there. Apparently sleep uses a bit more power than hibernate but how that translates in to actual monthly cost in terms of money i don't know.

I have in the past set my PC to carry out a task (usually backing up) in the early hours and then to 'sleep' only for SOMEtimes it to be on when i get up. I know it'll have gone in to sleep mode because i'll have gotten up for the toilet for example and seen it in sleep mode but then by the time i'm up it's back on again - which is one reason i've never really relied on sleep mode. Another is habit - i've just always turned everything off after using them. Even the TV in the living room - it doesn't go on standby, it gets turned off.

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Laptop user here ... at home I always shutdown when I'm finished; at work I leave my laptop on (plugged in to the docking station and secured with a Kensington lock, and screen-locked) - saves me having to wait 20 mins each morning for it to boot up (corporate OS image with loads of bloat) and means I can leave it running backups and virus scans overnight ... also, it's not my electricity!

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My home PC I shut down at the end of the day, because it could be 20 or more hours before it's used again. My work computer (which I use mainly at home) I sleep when I'm away from it during the day, hibernate at the end of the day when I'll be working the next day, and shut down at the end of the last working day of the week.

Personally, my desktop is always set to hibernated at night. The cost would be minimal.
Of course it's down to individual choices and depends on how you use your PC.
The TV etc is also left on standby, I'm not seeing huge electricity bills.
Visiting my Father in law, a while ago, he said he was tired as he'd been up past midnight. The reason he stayed up was so that he could turn off the recorder once it had finished recording his programme.....:D

SSDs boot faster than HDDs and there is mitigation e.g. if you have 8/16 GB of ram then it will need similar amounts of disk space which is not much I know but on SSDs why keep rewriting 8/16 GB every time you close the lid/hibernate etc. Personal preference :cool:

I use sleep mode on my win 7 x64 pc most of the time and only restart when necessary. I do not like the extra disk space needed for hibernation so do not use it although it does have some appealing features, such as O could power everything off and disconnect power and still resume where I was.

I have tested the power usage with a plug in device I have and it is only a few watts while in sleep mode which is acceptable to me.

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